


The Mermaid & the Magic Lamp

by chrysalisdreams



Series: Lost Princess [3]
Category: Moana (2016), The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Aladdin's Lamp, Gen, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 14:58:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11359803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalisdreams/pseuds/chrysalisdreams
Summary: When Ariel finds a magic lamp, the powerful person she lets out of it offers her three wishes if she helps him get his magic back.This is one of the mixed up tales that the traveling players performer inElsa of Corona. Stand alone silliness.





	The Mermaid & the Magic Lamp

_In Elsa of Corona a group of performers tell mixed up tales. Here is one of them._

The Mermaid & the Magic Lamp

Visitors come from all over the world for the festival of lanterns in Corona, and return home by land or ship with treasures traded and souvenirs saved. The peril of powerful storms over the ocean can catch up a ship and break it apart, scattering those treasures into the ocean deep, into the world under the sea, where no man on legs can go. I say “man” because once, there was a girl who could ask the ocean to clear her way… but that is a story for another day.

The merfolk keep to themselves, but once in a while, a young swimmer will become curious about the world above and swim to the surface. Ariel was a mermaid who like to spy on the ships that cruised above. The seafaring vessels came in all different shapes, with landwalkers aboard who were different shapes and colors from ship to ship. She collected the interesting objects that came from the ships, tossed into the sea in a storm or from some other, unknown reason. 

She saw lights in the sky that were not stars, but floated with the currents of wind until their light faded; then they would fall to the sea. They were made of thin stuff, like her books. They would be warm to the touch at first, those few moments after going dark. She wondered if they had been alive when light and flying and were dead when they fell. She let the ocean take them instead of saving the lanterns in her grotto.

One evening, when she was watching a ship with striped sails, she saw a landwalker make a lantern come alight. He then released it and it floated away and upward. Ariel saw that in his other hand, the landwalker held a vessel with a small light dancing on the end of a narrow spout. 

She had an object like that in her grotto! It was a little larger, and the lid would not lift up to let her look inside, but it was the same yellow, shiny metal and the same shape.

The objects of landwalkers looked best above the waves, out of the water. As soon as the sun had begun to rise, she carried her matching vessel from her grotto to a small island, remote from all else, where Ariel liked to go with her salvaged treasures. She would arrange them on the shore and lie on the beach in the waves, looking at the odd objects, imagining the reasons for their shapes. Now she placed her object on a rock. She watched it shine as it dried in the sun. She picked it up and shook it, and again she tried to open the stuck lid. Then a strange inspiration gave her the idea to make the metal gleam brighter.

“Maybe if it’s shiny,” she said to coconut crab scurrying up a nearby palm tree, “then the little light will come out of the end.”

She took a handful of her flowing hair, which was as red as coals, something she had never seen, and used her tresses to polish the belly of the lamp. Because a lamp is what it was: a magic lamp, a vessel enchanted to hold a being of fire called a genie, or djinn.

A cloud of smoke billowed from the lamp! It began to shake like a living thing! Ariel couldn’t hold on to it, and it bounced out her hands, landing on the beach sand. Then, suddenly, in the smoke there appeared a magnificent example of landwalker. He was a man as wide as a giant manta ray. His smooth skin, as brown as coconuts, featured patterns over the contours of his powerful muscles. He looked as strong as Ariel’s father, King Triton! His hair was as long and lovely as Ariel’s, but glossy and full in the sun, and a deep black like lava glass.

He stretched, looked up at the blue sky, and yelled, “AAAAH! FINALLY!”

Ariel’s eyes grew wide. With a flip of her green tail, she hid under the waves.

“Wait!” the magnificent man called to her as he looked around at his location. “You dropped something!”

Ariel popped her head above the waves when she was far enough from the shore to feel safe. Seeing the landwalker pick up and offer the magic lamp to her, she shook her head. “Isn’t that yours?” she asked. She was still trembling with surprise, but her curiosity kept her from swimming away as she knew she perhaps should.

“Nooo,” he assured. “It belongs to that tricky, double crossing Howl--” he stopped himself. “Nevermind that. Listen. Don’t you want your three wishes?”

“Wishes!” Ariel thought of her wish to have legs and dance on the sand.

“Sure…” The man smiled, his teeth perfectly white and gleaming. His eyes sparkled. He sat his thick body down on the sand, meaty calves crossed. Sand crusted the soles of his large feet. He pat the wet sand near him. “Swim on up.”

Ariel couldn’t stop herself.

She bodysurfed in, not so far that she couldn’t turn back into the safety of the sea, but as far up on land as she had practiced many times. She lay on her front, leaning on her elbows. “I’m Ariel,” she gave her name. “Daughter of King Triton,” she added, so that he would know she had backup if he tried anything rude.

“A princess,” the landwalker said with speculation in his look. “Well, princess,” he pointed both index fingers at his face, “I’m Maui.” He waited for her reaction.

“Nice to meet you,” said Ariel.

Maui’s face fell. “Maui?” he prompted her recognition. “Demigod? Harnessed the sun? Created coconut trees?” At Ariel’s blank face, his voice rose. “Stole fire to give to mankind? MAUI??!?”

Ariel bit her lower lip. “Oh,” she said. She didn’t know who she was, but she could tell that she was supposed to know he was important. Bravely, she asked, “What’s fire?”

Maui stared at the mermaid. He blinked. “Of course. A mermaid,” he said to himself. “It burns. It makes light, like a little drop of the sun,” he explained.

“You did all that?” Ariel asked. “And you can make my wish come true?”

Maui opened his mouth as if to say yes, then slowly closed his mouth and showed his empty hands. “I can’t do anything without my magic…” he noted her fishtail, “hook,” he omitted. “It looks like this.” He pointed to one of his tattoos. “Have you seen it?”

“Oh, yes!” Ariel’s bright smile lit up her face. “It’s in my grotto!”

“Can you bring it here?” Maui asked the obvious.

“Back in a jiffy!” With the next retreating wave, Ariel splashed back into the salty deep. She swam as quick as thought to her cave of treasures. Maui’s hook was almost as big as Ariel, but in the water, even the giant bone fishhook had buoyancy, and the little mermaid was much stronger than she appeared. Without delay, she took the magic hook to the waiting demigod. Close to the shore, she lifted herself up to a rock, then tossed the big fishhook toward Maui on the beach.

He sprang to his feet and caught it with one hand. Triumph on his face, he flourished the magic fishhook with a twirl. “Back in business,” he crowed. “Now to get off this island.”

“Um,” Ariel prompted. “Can I make my wish now?” She sat up straight. “I wish to have legs so I can go onland! My father could give them to me, but he doesn’t let me go anywhere.”

Maui waded into the shallows until he was chest deep. “I can’t give you legs,” he revealed. He gave her a pretense of sympathy.

“You lied to me?” Ariel asked with dismay.

“Good for me, too bad for you, that you didn’t know my reputation. I’m Maui, demigod, hero, _trickster_. I don’t have the kind of magic that can give you legs. But,” he pointed the fishhook at himself, “I can give myself a tail.” With a zap of magic, he turned his lower half into a shark tail. “Sorry you couldn’t get that wish, princess. But here’s some advice: listen to your dad and stay home!” he called as he changed shape again, this time into a bird.

Stunned by the betrayal, Ariel watched him fly up to glide on a thermal. She had helped him escape, first being stuck in a magic lamp, then being stuck on a remote island! He was nearly out of earshot when she shouted after him. “At least you could have said ‘Thank You!’,” she yelled.

He called back, his voice nearly drowned out by the sound of the waves, “ _You’re welcome!_ ”

-o-


End file.
